Vincent Houben, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1957. Ph.D. from Leiden University. Lecturer of Southeast Asian History at Leiden University.
Fellow (1 September 1994 – 31 January 1995)
The first semester of the year 1994/95 was spent in a remunerative way at NIAS. Besides participating in two international conferences, giving two lectures (of which one at NIAS), writing two articles on colonial labour history and revising several chapters of a forthcoming book on Dutch-Indonesian relations, I took several necessary prepatory steps for the realization of the project on the modern economic history of Indonesia. These steps consisted of formulating a number of basic inferences on the economic history of Java for the 1830-1900 period. These inferences will function as the structure upon which the intended survey study is built. The next step was formulating the explanatory text appended to each individual inference. I am still in the process of realizing this part, which is in fact quite time-consuming as it entails a re-reading of the vast recent literature on the subject. My efforts will continue as regular consultation is planned with Dr. Thee Kian Wie and the other participant in the project, Dr. Thomas Lindblad. All in all satisfactory progress has been made. Also, in a more general manner, I gained useful stimulus by discussions with the other NIAS-Fellows. In this respect my participation in the Anderson/Twining Inference-group needs to be mentioned.